


She's A Fire-Starter

by nazgularepeopletoo



Category: A Series of Unfortunate Events (TV), A Series of Unfortunate Events - Lemony Snicket
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, M/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Unhealthy Relationships, Vague Mentions of Abuse, y'all have to trust me when i say the slamming door is jacques
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-27
Updated: 2018-06-27
Packaged: 2019-05-29 05:35:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15066302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nazgularepeopletoo/pseuds/nazgularepeopletoo
Summary: Some people choose their soulmates, some people don't have a choice.





	She's A Fire-Starter

The skin was still red. Anyone with half a brain could tell that the ‘soulmate mark’ was actually a tattoo. It wasn’t unheard of for people of the upper class to switch their marks to make more profitable match, a word which here means “more money for for those who already have too much money”. Jerome Squalor, however, was not one of those kinds of people, and everyone who knew him knew that. 

So it came as a shock to the whole group when he showed up the next day, wrist red and a wedding invitation for that night. There were raised eyebrows, more than a few murmurs, and, as a surprise to no one, one slamming door. No one saw the wince that crossed Jerome’s face when he heard the noise. 

The brand new words on his wrist said “Oh, it’s going to be you.”, which even to him sounded inorganic and false. He didn’t understand why she had chosen him. Or why she hadn’t gotten his surprised “Excuse me?” tattooed on her upper arm. None of it made sense, but he wasn’t one to argue, and maybe then certain annoying relatives would finally stop bothering him about settling down with a nice girl. Not that Esmé was a nice girl by any definition. 

 

Had she chosen him because the mark he’d already had was not visible in public? 

 

The rest of the evening was spent with strained congratulations and plenty of warnings about his new fiancee’s demeanor, a word which here means “she was a terrible person”. It wasn’t until Beatrice put a hand on his hip that he broke his unaffected cheerfulness. He yelped, jerking back from her with a flash of pain on his face, quickly smoothed over. Beatrice looked at him sadly, opening her mouth to speak but ultimately thinking better of it. He gave her a tight smile and moved off, mixing into the crowd.

 

The skin was still red. A blotchy, mottled circle on his hip where words used to be. Some of them were still visible. A “please” and a “you”, but everything else had been burned off.   


End file.
